A Promise Higher Than Anxiety

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

If you would, please turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 6. And if you don't have a Bible with you, and you don't have a Bible app on your phone, either one of those are great. There are Bibles that are under the seats that are in front of you. We're going to be in Hebrews 6 today. But before we jump into that, I want to show you a picture of when my wife and I got married. I know, I know, I'm adorable. I'm just kidding. I have bleach blonde tips. There's not much adorable about me right there. Yes, that's me and my wife, Christie, many moons ago, back in 2000. You know, we were, we were very young in this picture. These are the starry-eyed notions of a 23 year old man, if you could call me that, and a 22 year old woman. And we were very young, but we knew in that moment that we were ready to promise ourselves to each other. And in that wedding ceremony, we made promises to one another.

And the older I've gotten, the more those promises have sounded appropriate. And I just want to walk you through our vows. They were the traditional wedding vows. And this is what we said. It said, so this is my part. I said, I Drew, take you Christie, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward. I promise to love you for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for saking all others. I promise to give my life to you as long as we both shall live. The promises of a wedding, what we traditionally refer to as wedding vows, they include these two ingredients. They include warnings and assurances. Wedding vows include these warnings and assurances. There's warnings. The warnings are, there will be worse times than right now. Right now is glorious. Right now, we're all dudded up. all dudded up. We got all of our friends and family around us. Right now is cool,

but there will come times of poverty, there will come times of sickness, there will come times of sorrow, there will come a time whenever you will need to forsake all others. And we even say, till death do us part. We even mention death at a wedding. That's how sober this thing is. That's how warning filled wedding vows are. But there's also an equal part. There are assurances that this other person is going to have you forever. They're going to receive you. They're going to take you. They're going to build a life with you. They're promising to uphold you in the midst of those tough times. We have assurances ultimately from the Lord that he's going to bless that union. In a wedding, as the promises are being made, you see the warnings and assurances. And what the interesting thing is you actually see these two ingredients in wedding vows that aren't even Christian wedding vows. You see it's across the

spectrum. Like read Hindu wedding vows, read Buddhist wedding vows, and they're full of warnings and assurances. It's as if everyone recognizes, no matter what, But no matter what their tradition, that when you make a promise this big, you need to both encourage people and to protect that bond at the exact same time. In our series, we've been talking about a promise, a higher promise. We've been working through Hebrews chapters five through eight. We're gonna be in the middle of chapter six today. And we've looked closely at this promise that we have in Jesus. We saw two weeks ago that this promise stands higher than shame.

Shame can leave us feeling disqualified, disconnected, crippled. And the promise that we have in Jesus gives us deep assurance. It gives us a hope that goes all the way down. Hebrews 4:16 tells us that we can approach God's throne with confidence, that we can find mercy and grace in our time of need. What an assurance that is. When we are feeling disqualified, when we aren't sure of where we are, when we need that encouragement, we have it right here in the promise, go to God, be honest before him. You can find grace and mercy in your time of need because Jesus himself is our source of eternal salvation. Last week we shifted, we went from assurance to warning that we talked about how the promise that we have in Jesus stands higher than our negligence. to those who keep playing church, to those who are repenting on Sunday, but then living exactly how

they want during the week. The promise that we have in Jesus issues a stern warning. In 5.11, we see negligence could be a sign that you are not saved at all, that you have only tasted the powers of the age to come, that maybe you have been inoculated against the gospel that can actually save you. Maybe the thing that you think you believe, this little powerless thing that's not really making a difference in your life, isn't the gospel at all. Maybe you've never said yes.

And in case you missed those previous sermons, you can go to our website, southburleson.church slash sermons, and they're there. I would encourage you to listen to them if you have not. So today in Hebrews 6, we shift back. We shift back from warning to assurance. And we see it in Hebrews 6:9, and we looked at that last week, but it bears repeating. At the end of this warning passage, at the end of this passage that can send chills down your spine, we have verse 9, it says, though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. Listen to the assurance that is there. You see this shift a lot in Scripture. You see this shift between an assurance and a warning, an assurance and a warning. And it is not to play mind games. It is there to display this full range of life following the Lord Jesus Christ. There are, in this life of following the Lord Jesus Christ,

there are potential miscalculations and misunderstandings that are really big, really big ones that could actually lead to death. I'm reminded in Matthew 7 of the people who were who were being condemned to hell and they were saying, Lord, Lord, didn't we do all of these wonderful things in your name. And Jesus says, I never knew you. It's chilling. And at the same time, following the Lord is also full of effort and exhaustion. Sometimes, oftentimes, we reach our breaking point. And that is part of the journey. In fact, if you are confused about what I'm saying, just ask somebody who has followed the Lord for more than five years. And they can tell you all about the times of exhaustion that they needed assurances and the times of miscalculation where they needed warnings. They're there. They're in their lives. Ask them about the warnings they received. In fact, part of our job as

church members, right, we had eight people become members this past Wednesday, real excited, glad that that's happening. But part of our job as a church member is, is in our time of rebellion and in our time, even just plain old misunderstanding, we need warning and correction from our church body. We need to be set right. We also need to warn and correct other people out of care for their souls. Not just to say, nana nana boo boo, I'm more spiritual than you. That's not the point, right? And if anybody would actually say that, I would worry about them. In addition, as a church member, you're going to have times of exhaustion and brokenness and confusion and frustration, and you need assurance and encouragement. You also need to give that assurance and encouragement to those that are downtrodden, to those that are past their breaking point, and remind them of the

promise. But listen, we're a lot more comfortable with that second part than we are the first. We love giving encouragement. We hate giving warning, but both are needed. You need both. I need both. We need to be able to do that as a church family. If we don't, we're going to be walking with a pretty severe limp. We're not going to be able to do what the Lord has called us to do. So today, we find deep assurance in a promise that is higher than anxiety. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. We're going to start in Hebrews, chapter 6, verse 11. 11 and 12 says, and we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. What it's talking about here is it's saying there is a deliberate action that

accords withholding a promise. Right? When I made my promises to my wife, I didn't just say, oh, okay, there's my promises, but it's not really going to change how I live my life. No, it totally changed how I live my life. There is a resolve that flows out of believing a promise and that if you believe this promise, you work with the promise. If you believe a promise, you work with it.

And that's why it's saying, look, you have this full assurance right here. Don't be sluggish. Don't be sluggish. The Old Testament is full of examples of people that worked with God's promise. They didn't get to kind of set their own terms, but they received the promise from God and they worked with that promise. Gideon, Ruth, Boaz, Samuel, David, all of these people all resolved to take action in the situation that they were in to work with the promise. Not work against it and I want you to just consider Hannah Maybe you don't know the story of Hannah Hannah's an Old Testament Saint she was she was childless

And she was praying for a child in the temple and she promised the Lord She said Lord if you if you give me a child that child was gonna serve you in this temple for the rest of his life and And the Lord heard Hannah's prayer and he gave Hannah a child that she named Samuel. She worked with that promise because after she had the child, once she had weaned Samuel, she soberly gave her child over to the work of the temple, the work of a priest. It's sober. It's deliberate. There's a resolve that accords with believing a promise, working with the promise. The pastor in Hebrews chooses another Old Testament figure, not Hannah. He chooses Abraham. So we see it in verses 13 through 15. It says, for when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself. God swears by himself. That's how much he is doubling down on this promise.

He's saying, surely I will bless you and multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise." Now, I want to take a second here and I want to single out verse 15. It says, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. There's a lot there that is not exactly drawn out that I kind of want to examine for just a second. There's a reason that Abraham, above most, is iconic on working with the promise. Because not only was it one of the first promises that God made with people, it's also because Abraham was full of flaws, full of them. So there's three parts, right? So we can see, we can see God delivering his promise. We can see Abraham working with that promise and says he's patiently waited. And then we can see Abraham receiving that fulfillment that he obtained the promise. I want to focus on the second and third part first, and then go back to the first.

So we're going to start with Abraham working with the promise. What does it look like? So Abraham is working with the promise, and it was an extremely bumpy ride. That little part where it says, having patiently waited, that's a decade. Okay. That's a decade. first of all, having patiently waited is a decade and it was full of mistakes. It was full of relational strife and the cause of that was anxiety. I want you to listen to Abraham right before he receives the promise and this is in Genesis 15. It'll be up here. You don't have to turn there if you don't want to. If you don't believe me, you can turn there. This is the promise and I want you you to listen to Abraham's voice, right? Abraham said, Oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus, his servant. And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring and a member of my household will be my heir. This is

the translation from the Hebrew. What are you doing? It's not really. I made that up. That's the tone, though. The tone is, my heir, the only living person that's going to receive everything that you have given me, everything that I have built up, all of my inheritance, all of my legacy is going to be this Dude, Eliezer of Damascus, who's not related to me, doesn't, he's just a servant in my house. I'm sure he's a great guy, but God, how are you going to fix this? Because this is Abraham reacting. This is Abraham reacting to a promise that God has made him to make his children like the stars of the sky, his generation, his descendants, like the stars of the sky. Abraham is anxious because he cannot see the end of what's going to happen. He doesn't understand how we're going to get from A to B, and he feels really stuck in A, and B looks so nice, and how in the world are you going to get me there, God?

You've given me no offspring and a member of my household. My servant will be my heir. At a later point, Abraham even tries to hijack this promise by having a child with his maidservant, Hagar. And even through all that, even with all of that, all that's going on, Abraham trying to take the promise in his own hands, trying to hijack the promise, even Abraham like kind of being real and saying, I don't see how this is going to happen. I don't understand what this is going to be like. through all that, the Bible's description here in Hebrew 6, Abraham having patiently waited. So Abraham received what he was waiting for, but even here, so on the third part, Abraham received, he obtained the promise, it says. Even here, we need to remember, the promise was for Abraham's descendants to be like numbered as the stars in the sky.

That was the promise. What did Abraham receive? One kid, one heir. He has promised multitudes of descendants. And Abraham never, not in this life, Abraham never saw any of that. He had a kid and he believed God's promise that from that kid was going to be descendants numbering as the seashore or as the stars in the sky. I don't know why I can't get that straight in my head. But Abraham only sees a fraction of that promise fulfilled. So here at the end of 15 when it says surely, sorry, when it says, When it says, and thus Abraham, having patiently waited a decade full of flaws, lots of anxiety, obtained the promise. He obtained one one millionth of that promise. He obtained enough. God kept his promise now. But Abraham didn't lay eyes on the vast majority of that fulfillment. In Abraham, we can see that working with God's promises is full of opportunities for anxiety.

It's full of fits and starts and frustrations and things that we can't see. It's full of things that we're gonna be promised something and we're not even going to lay eyes on it in our lifetime. Think about that. Think about the things you prayed for last week. What if God would give you all of those things that you prayed for last week, but it wasn't in your lifetime. It was something your grandchildren received. You okay with that? You pray with that heart? I know Hollis is. I got an amen from Hollis. And so even though all of this, all that I've just said is true, and all of that is somewhat of an encouragement to us, the focus of the rest of the chapter in Hebrews 6 is not on us, it's on God, delivering a promise. So look at verses 16 and 17.

It says, for people swear by something greater than themselves. So this is the pastor in Hebrews talking about how God made his promise. So we've already covered Abraham, how he received it and patiently waited. But now we're talking about the one who gave the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves and in all their disputes that oath is final for confirmation. So, when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable nature of his promise, he guaranteed it with an oath. There's a lot we can focus on, but I want to just hone in on something right here in verse 17. When God desired to show us, those who are the heirs of the promise, when God desired to show us more convincingly the unchangeable character of his purpose. I want you to understand that in this description it's talking about God going over the top

and guaranteeing his promise. That God doubles down in delivering these promises to us because it it says he desired to show us more convincingly. More than what? More than what? What is God trying to top? More convincingly than what? It's probably more convincing than the tidal wave of indicators that say that God will not, has not, or cannot come through. Just like Abraham, when he received the promise, And it was a decade until he received it, until he saw any kind of fruit from that. And he was only getting older, and he was only becoming less able to bear children. All of those things were happening.

All of those things were happening. All those indicators were just hitting him in the face on top of those indicators, more convincingly than those indicators, more convincingly than the harsh realities that are right in front of us, God desires to show us His unchangeable character, the unchangeable character of His purpose. Just like Abraham, whenever we are working with the promise that God has given us, it is full of opportunity for anxiety, riddled with it actually.

I want to illustrate with just one promise. It's a promise that Jesus gives in Matthew 11. It's a very famous promise. Matthew 11, 28 through 30, Jesus says to his, just people that are listening, it's disciples and other people. He says, come to me, all who are labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle, a lowly heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. All right. It's a really, that's a familiar promise for many of us. I want us to hear this promise, right? I want us to understand this is a promise that Jesus is giving to us when we feel the burden of something that is too heavy. And he's saying, look, give me that burden. I can handle that burden. Don't try to take the burden from yourself. So the promise is if you give me the burden, I will handle the burden.

And I'll handle it better than you ever could. Okay, let's take an example. You hear this promise and you feel the burden. You are managing the burden of a family member that needs extra care. A family member that needs extra care in some capacity. You got a relative going through an addiction. You've got somebody that needs physical attention significantly more than normal people do. You are feeling that burden. You want to be there for that family member. But you are beginning to be crushed under the weight of supporting the person. You don't know how to help them take the next step. You don't understand what they need to do next. You feel that you are at your wits end and when you read these promises, you cry because you understand the difficulty that this is talking about. And when you hear Jesus promise you, come to me. You are inside saying, yes, I want to come to you.

Yes, Jesus, I want to give you that word. Yes, yes, yes. There's no problem with your confession on this front. And you say, yes, Jesus, I will give you this burden. And so inside you said, okay, okay, I'm going to give it to you Jesus. You promise to take it. So you begin to pray. You begin to pray and say, Jesus, I need you. I need you to take the burden of protecting this family member, of helping this family member get over what they need to get over. I'm at my end, Jesus, I need you to, you know,

I need you to take the wheel as Kerry Underwood. so poetically put it, Jesus, I need you to come and take over. I need you to do something different. But then, then, then, anxiety creeps in. Anxiety comes because you cannot see immediate results. Anxiety comes in because that family member takes a turn for the worse. And you thought it was going to be better because you were praying for it and you knew Jesus was going to take care of it and everything was going to be okay. But now everything you see in front of you doesn't seem like it's okay. What are you going to do in that moment? This is when anxiety just rears its ugly head. When the family member goes through a rough patch, when we need to wait a lot longer than we thought. Look, I've been there, right? I've struggled along with a family member, a few actually, family members that needed that extra care

that needed me to kind of just like extend and be there. And every time I tried to be the savior, every time I tried to fix it in my own power, my own ingenuity, my own creativity, every time I tried to do that, out of a lack of trust, when I was not working with the promise, when I was working against it, it always ended in frustration. It always ended in burnout. It always ended with me saying things I should not have said. It all turned to dirt. It just fell apart in my hands.

I imagine that you, whether it's a family member or if it's a boss that you hate or if it's some kind of situation that's outside of your control, when you try in your own power, in your anxiety, when you try to handle that in your own, it just disintegrates in front of you. You just can't hold on to it. Just like Abraham, we are tempted to hijack that promise.

And this is why God desires to show more convincingly, because the things that are in front of you tend to be very convincing. The results, the things that you can physically, tangibly account for, don't always throw you an encouragement parade. Okay, they don't always line up to just say, look, everything's going to be great. That's not typically what the facts do.

God shows more convincingly. He expands on this in the next verse. God shows more convincingly. Verse 18, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. God knows that we need strong encouragement. God knows that we don't need just a little pick me up. We don't just need verse of the day. Verse of the day is great. Verse of the day is not going to get you over the mountain. God's promise is going to get you over the mountain. God who gives strong encouragement. Again, God goes over the top, he doubles down because he knows it is difficult to believe. Jesus is not wondering why you struggle to believe. Nobody in heaven is gasping out loud because you showed a lack of faith. There is a general understanding on everybody's part that it

is hard to believe that the God-man crucified, resurrected, and ascended is making intercession on your behalf when you can see, taste, feel, touch, and hear, none of that. None of it. It is not a difficult thing to believe and God knows we need the strong encouragement. And it's funny, it's not as if God is acting out of insecurity, right? In other words, he doesn't feel the need to encourage us, give us strong encouragement because somehow he's capricious or his character's in question, or he might not feel like helping out that day. That's how we feel sometimes, but that's not the reality. God's not acting out of insecurity. He's saying that we need strong encouragement because our faith is fragile, and he knows. He knows it's difficult to believe in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Our creator understands the difficulties of being human,

of believing something we can't see, of trusting him, even when it feels like he's not there. This is why we have a promise that stands higher than anxiety, because anxiety is nipping at our heels every step of the way. Many of you are gonna wake up tomorrow morning riddled with anxiety. You're gonna wonder about that thing, that meeting, that thing that needs to get done at a certain time, that appointment that you have to keep, or you're going to lose your job, or this thing that you have to manage, or somebody's going to be mad at you, or it's going to be really bad. We think about those things all the time. This is why our hope is bigger than that. This is why the promise stands taller than that. Last two verses, verses 16 through 19, Hebrews 6. It says, We have this assurance, this promise, this hope. We have it as a sure and steadfast anchor of the

soul. Can I get an amen for that? Yes. We have it as a sure. I mean, what assurances, man? What assurances? We have this as assurance, steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain that is Old Testament speak for face to face with God. This isn't on like one end of a really long procession that eventually gets to God. We don't tell somebody that tells somebody that tells somebody that tells somebody that whispers in God's ear and God might have gotten the message or might not. No, no, no, no. This goes to God's throne. This goes to him directly, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. We're going to get to Melchizedek a little later, but it is enough to say now that the promise here goes into the deepest parts.

The promise is not some afterthought. It's not something that God kind of tacked on to make us feel better. The promise is rooted in the deepest parts of our relationship with God, and that's exactly where our anxieties begin. That's where anxieties grow. If deep down we believe that we are on our own... Let me say it again. If deep down we believe that we are on our own, that God will not help us, that all we have in our life is what we make of it. And that's all we have that will play out in our lives in a thousand different ways. It will affect how we conduct our relationships. It will affect how we raise our kids, how we handle conflict, how we react to disappointment, even how we react to a good kind of surprise. It's going to play out in a thousand different ways if we believe that we are on our own. And here's the great thing about following the Lord, right?

This isn't self-talk. This isn't like, hey, if you get up tomorrow morning and you tell yourself everything's going to be fine, then everything's going to be fine. Here's the reality. People that do that, that don't have a deep assurance that's rooted in the inner place, it's rooted in God, if you don't have that, it's just talk. It's just you convincing yourself that everything's going to be okay. That's not what this is. This is dipping your mind into the reality that the creator of the universe is working all things, all things, things you hate, things you're surprised by, things you're frustrated with, all those things. He is working them out to advance his kingdom, to grow you in his likeness, to show you his faithfulness. All of those things are true. It doesn't matter what you or I think about them. It's all true. Jesus invites us into a life of working with the promises of God.

It is appropriate that we are looking at these scriptures on Mother's Day, because there is not a role that I can think of that requires more faith that everything's going to turn out okay than a mother. Right? What does a mother do? mother faithfully and loyally and lovingly just tends. They look after people that, for the most part, don't understand that they're being looked after to that degree. I'm going to include husbands in that too. There's a lack of awareness, of understanding that what is happening from a mother to a child is this, it is a sacrificial giving. It is a true and earnest desire to see you through anything. And if we can see that in an imperfect mother and an earthly mother, think about what our heavenly Father has in store for us. Think of the promises that He has laid out for us. Think of how he is imagining, creating, helping, encouraging us toward those

good things that are right in front of us. Things that sometimes we have trouble seeing. Our encouragement is to not fall into anxiety and try to somehow wrestle control of our lives away from the Lord God, but instead to come to him with the things that make us anxious and say, I need to give this to you today. And you know what, tomorrow I might need to give it to you again. And maybe in an hour and a half I'm gonna need to give it to you again, but I need to give it to you again. What would it look like for you to work with the promise when you are handling conflict? What would it look like for you to understand that as someone is yelling at you and blaming you, maybe even for something that you actually did. What would it look like for you to have the promise? I'm not saying like you don't shake and cry or get frustrated or yell back. What I'm saying is when you have the promise that the Lord God in heaven

is working out all of that, even somebody yelling at your face that he's working all of that out for your good, for His glory, for His kingdom, to see many people come to Him. What an assurance that is. Because, yeah, you got yelled at, and yeah, like you're wiping your face off in the bathroom and your hands are a little shaky, but that's not the end. It is a frustration. It is a setback. It is a problem. It is an obstacle, but it is not the end. It is not the sum total of your life. Your life is more than your problems. And sometimes that's hard to see. What would it look like for you to raise your kids differently if you trusted Jesus to be their Savior instead of you? It's a hard one, right? How do we trust Jesus as our children are seemingly headed off the edge of a cliff? How do we love them in that moment? How do we trust Jesus in that moment? How do we connect with lost people without trusting?

Look, this is the best thing. When somebody informed me of this, this was so good. How do I reach out to lost people when I'm riddled with anxiety that I'm the one who has to save them? It's impossible. It's impossible. But here's the truth. Here's the promise. The promise is that the Lord God in heaven is at work right now in the lives of people that do not know Him. That the Lord God in heaven is speaking to them, is giving them truth, is letting them see beauty, is helping them experience justice, is helping them come to Him. If not, I mean blindly feeling their way forward toward Jesus. The Lord God is already doing that. That's not up to me. I don't need to say something clever. I need to love them and share my story and listen to theirs and pray for them to come to know the Lord. That's my job. That's all I need to do. I'm not their Savior.

What would, and I want to kind of end here, what would our church look like? If in the middle of anxiety, in the middle of you saying, how is your week and someone beginning to just dump the anxiety truckload upon you? What would it look like for you to patiently listen and then say, can I pray for you? Can I help you remember promises right now? Man, what an assurance that would be. And yeah, you'd feel dumb for a half second, but then those assurances would just wash over you and it would begin to combat all of those anxieties. Today, our encouragement is this, is that the Lord Jesus has done everything for us, has done all of it on our behalf, that we are going to battle anxiety and we're going to lose some of those battles, man. We're not, I'm not saying like, hey, what would it look like for us to have an anxiety-free life? What I'm saying though is, what would it look like for us to be able to beat back

the anxiety of having to handle everything on our own. What freedom, what joy, what encouragement, what assurance that would be. Today we're gonna have our time of invitation. And this is just where we just wanna keep space open for you to make a decision and to receive help doing that. For some of you that's gonna be becoming a Christian. You wanna become a Christian right now, that's awesome. I'm gonna be right up here. If you want somebody to talk to, I'm gonna be right up here. If you came with somebody and you know they're a Christian and you're interested in becoming a Christian, you have my permission. Talk to that person. You don't have to come up here and talk to me. You can talk to that person. Perfectly fine. We're all just as much Christians. I'm not more of a Christian than the person who brought you. If you just need prayer and encouragement, you can come forward and I'll pray for you

and encourage you. You can also ask the person next to you. If you wanna join our church, you can remember, if you wanna be baptized, those are decisions that we make publicly. And so I encourage you to come forward and make that decision publicly. Let me pray for us. Jesus, we ask that you would help us, that you would encourage us, that you would show us the riches assurances that we have in you, that you would build us up in a way that is God-honoring, and not in a way that's false or full of self-talk, but that you give us a sure and steady hope and anger for our souls. It's something that grounds us in the reality that is true, not in this fake thing that gets us anxious all the time. Not just what we can see in front of us.

It's your name that we pray. You're there forever and my soul. You found me from the shame that was my own. And to tell how merciful you've been. Oh, like my ears on my eyes. Worthy Father, we pray in your name, Lord, that you may lift the burdens off our shoulders. And we could take this scripture seriously, Scripture seriously, that you carry our burdens, Lord. We don't have to worry and stress. They don't add anything to our life, Lord, but you are in control. We can take peace in that, and we can rest in that, and we can go about our day loving people, unencumbered because we know you're in control of everything. Lord, help us to be loving, help us to look outside of ourselves, and to be an encouragement to those around us. In Jesus' name, amen.